Private equity, hedge fund vultures “circling public education”

Don’t expect the upbeat news from the state education world reported in Sarah Ovaska’s post below[1] to slow down another powerful trend in public education: the attempt by corprate pirates to steal our schools.

As Reuters reporter Stephanie Simon reports in this story[2] via the HuffPost, the big money guys on Wall Street are hard at work figuring out ways to muscle in and claim a share of the half-trillion dollars the U.S. spends on public education.

“The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.

Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they’re as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They’ll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.

‘You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up,’ said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a Boston consulting firm. ‘It could get really, really big.'”

Simon’s story helps explain in part why a troubled company like K12, Inc. has hired a virtual swarm of lobbyists[3] to lobby North Carolina state government.